


Home Again, Home Again

by seriousfic



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 23:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3429389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriousfic/pseuds/seriousfic





	Home Again, Home Again

Lexa had shadowed her on the ride over. She’d been staying closer and closer to Clarke over the past few weeks, until Clarke had finally understood why. It was almost funny—Lexa was probably the last person she had to worry about losing. Just by being born, the woman had survived a nuclear apocalypse. But now she worried about Clarke. She kept close enough to stop a blade, if it came to it.

 

“Of all the stations to survive,” Clarke said, staring at the Japanese flag emblazoned on the wall, half burned away by reentry. “The detention block,” she concluded wearily.

 

Lexa drew at her, either curious or sensing that perhaps Clarke needed an excuse to talk. “Where you kept your prisoners?”

 

“Where we kept our children. C’mon. We need to see if there’s anything to salvage before Mount Weather gets its hands on it.”

 

They rode down the ridge. It’d taken some doing, but Lexa had convinced Clarke that this was no time to learn to ride. She’d been getting lessons, but she still doubted her qualification to manage a few miles on horseback. So she’d ridden bitch with Lexa. Then made the mistake of referring to it as such.

 

After she’d explained the situation, Lexa had laughed. “As your people would say—‘what else is new’?”

 

“Maybe if I spent less time riding you and more on a horse…”

 

That had shut Lexa up.

 

They arrived at the gaping hole in the side of the hull. It had split open in the crash. If there’d been survivors, they’d left. Animals had picked the dead clean. It was easy to pay no attention to the bones, pretend they were just part of the wreckage. No matter how small they were.

 

Lexa took Clarke’s hand as they went inside. Clarke wondered if the Grounders had any words for how thankful that made her feel. She knew she didn’t.

 

“And they kept the riot gear…” Clarke stopped in front of a doorway. It’d completely caved in. The room beyond was one big mass of debris. “Here. Another wasted trip.”

 

“I can ‘ride bitch’ on the way back,” Lexa offered. “At least you can gain some experience.”

 

“Yeah…” Still, Clarke wasn’t ready to leave. She wandered the promenade, just in case someone had survived all this time, all this damage. Or just because something in her stopped keening when she was inside the walls.

 

If she could go back, it would have to be to before her father dying, before the Ark breaking down, when the future was still far away. But the prison had had its moments. It’d been hard, but at least there were no choices to make. You just kept going.

 

Clarke supposed she still did. On and on and on. No choice in the matter. But now, she had the illusion of choice, the thought that things could’ve been different if only, somewhere down the line, she had zigged instead of zagged. That was more cruel by far.

 

She recognized her cell. She’d been marched there enough times, after the weekly showers, when water rations weren’t so low that she was just given a bucket of water and a sponge in her cell, had to trust the guards weren’t watching…

 

“Home sweet home,” she said, staring at the door. It’d broken off its hinges in the crash. Would never shut behind her again.

 

“They kept you here?” Lexa asked, but she didn’t sound curious. Her voice had that blankness that spoke volumes.

 

“Some of them,” Clarke replied.

 

“Who?”

 

“What are you gonna do, challenge them to a duel?”

 

Lexa’s brow furrowed, heightened by the war paint around her eyes. Like she was transforming into a beast. “Do you not think I could take them in single combat?”

 

Somehow, Clarke found the fearsomeness of her cute. She went to Lexa and took her hands. Hard and rough and with the grip of a pestle grinding in a mortar, but she wouldn’t have them any other way. “I think I would rather have you in my arms than fighting to restore my honor. No matter how little time it would take you to sword them up. Why waste time on the past when I have you now?”

 

“Because I don’t like the thought of you being caged,” Lexa said. “And I especially don’t like the thought of the ones who did it keeping their blood in their veins.”

 

“Yeah, well, you’d have to start with my mother, and that would not sell you as a future in-law.”

 

Lexa blinked. “Your family is nonsensical.”

 

“In my defense, have you _met_ the Blakes?”

 

Lexa grinned slightly. She stepped over to Clarke, pulling her close. She lived in distance, and so when they were alone, she could never be more content than in having Clarke in an embrace.

 

As she held Clarke from behind, chin resting on her shoulder, arms stronger than the harness in the dropship, she stared through the open door at the paintings Clarke had worked on every day she’d been imprisoned. Practicing, getting better, erasing them and refining them and turning her room into a work of art that was now crumpled and deformed by reality. That was the ground for you.

 

“Is this your work?” Lexa asked.

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“You drew it without ever seeing Earth?”

 

“I had pictures.”

 

“You didn’t use them.” Just because she could, Lexa pressed a small kiss to Clarke’s neck. “You saw it. In your heart. Where you were meant to go.”

 

“I had a few dreams. But it’s not like a forest is that hard to imagine. Picture a tree. Now picture a lot of them.”

 

“You _saw_ it,” Lexa insisted. “Because this is not your home. Where you met me, that is your home. And now you fight to protect it.”

 

Clarke still wasn’t quite clear on Lexa’s spiritual side. The Grounders were a private people, even more so in their religion, and Lexa insisted the only way for her to understand their beliefs was to live with them. Clarke wanted to understand everything. But she also wanted all the time it would take to understand everything. A lifetime, if that word still had any meaning.

 

“I imagined the ground,” she said, partly agreeing, partly not. “I thought it would be beautiful. I didn’t know how dangerous it would be.”

 

“And me?” Lexa asked, her lips tingling at Clarke’s ear.

 

“I imagined you and I thought you’d be dangerous. I didn’t know how beautiful you would be.”

 

Lexa turned Clarke around. Putting the paintings behind her. Putting herself in front of her. “I imagined love. I thought it’d be dangerous. I’d forgotten how beautiful it could be.”

 

Their kiss made Clarke want to paint again.


End file.
